To celebrate WOM4N, we asked several of our authors and staff to share their favourite female characters from the 4th Estate bookshelves. Here, Justine Gold explains the appeal of Flora 717, the humble insect at the heart of Laline Paull’s ‘The Bees’…

‘Flora thrills and frustrates me. Hatched into a world where deformity can mean death, Flora essentially defies the Hive’s eternal law – ‘Accept, Obey, Serve’ – from the very beginning of The Bees, through her physical strength and attributes. She kicks and forces herself out of her cell, is ‘obscenely ugly’ and ‘excessively large’, and is able to speak, while others of her kin are mute.